I understand that you are
having problems getting enough new recruits to join the ranks of the
United States military services. Given the impending threat of enemy
nations with larger armies amassing at our borders to invade our
country and ravage our people, the shortage of young Americans
willing to sign their lives over to you generals is probably the
greatest threat to our nation's security since Alexander the
Great.

I know that you have an
awful lot to deal with yourselves, generals, being responsible as you
are for the training of hundreds of thousands of our most
impressionable citizens to use an assortment of high-tech instruments
to kill people, so I thought you might need some help dealing with
your recruiting problems. I've come up with a few ideas for you to
look over. If you'd like to try them out, give me a call.

The first thing we need to
do is define the problem. It seems that even with the U.S. economy not doing
so well, young folks are choosing to take jobs in the private sector
instead of signing up for a hitch with you.

There are a number of
reasons that someone might choose a job with a private company over
enlistment. First of all, those other jobs offer more money. Don't
get me wrong, guys: patriotic fervor, shiny badges, and marching in
place for hours on end are great. But kids these days want something
they can put in the bank.

Then there's the issue of
lifestyle choice. Remember those crazy kids back in the Sixties that
whined about personal freedom and all that? Well, it's their children
that you're trying to recruit now, and let me tell you, all this
Yankee doodle dandy jazz just doesn't impress them. Do you really
expect them to line up to go work with a bunch of guys with bad
haircuts, be on call for 24 hours a day, and follow the orders of
some old guy just because he's got some fancy job title like Master
Sergeant? No offense, but you sirs need to get out more
often.

There's another small advantage that non-military employment offers that puts your recruiters at a bit of a disadvantage. I know it sounds crazy, but
job descriptions in the private sector usually don't include responsibilities such as shooting, stabbing, bombing, or otherwise killing people in rival organizations. Also, because of some nit-picky technicality, civilian employers aren't allowed to order their workers to engage in activities which are known to lead to death. Somehow, word has gotten out that your organization knowingly sends its employees into situations where there are people shooting
guns, laying land mines, and doing other dangerous things. This is a serious image problem that I suggest you get your marketing people on
as soon as possible.

I've gone ahead and done an
in-depth analysis of the military's weaknesses as an employer in the
eyes of the American public and come up with the following
recommendations. Of course, it's up to you to decide whether to
follow my advice. Just remember not to shoot the messenger,
okay?

Benefits

If the military is to
compete with the private sector, it must be willing to adopt some of
the more appealing aspects of civilian employment. You might want to
think about incorporating more employee protections into the
enlistment contract. A good place to start is more a comprehensive
insurance plan. Each soldier should be provided with ample coverage
for personal liability, in case of one of those incidents where a
family gets cranky about a little "friendly fire" horseplay or some
touchy foreigners start complaining about an innocent and unavoidable
accident like the one with that ski gondola in Italy. You should also
consider offering more complete medical and dental coverage, so that
when your soldiers have their bodies ripped apart in an enemy attack
they won't have to worry about a high deductible.

Health
and Safety

Allow OSHA to inspect your
facilities to ensure safe working conditions. They could make sure
that accidents waiting to happen such as barrels of noxious
chemicals, faulty equipment, loaded guns, and nuclear weapons could
be disposed of properly before anyone got hurt. OSHA might also be
willing to help you in the design of more ergonomic machine guns so
that your soldiers could avoid carpal tunnel
syndrome.

Unionize
the Military

A system for more equitable
employee relations might also attract more new recruits. Perhaps the
time has come to allow for labor organization in the military. The
rank and file might be more agreeable if they were able to elect
representatives to look out for their own best interests. Kids just
out of high school would probably be a little less uneasy about
signing up if they knew that they could go on strike in case of an
unpopular war.

Target
Your Advertising

I know that the Pentagon has
already put out advertisements for new recruits, but it's obvious
that they aren't working. Why? The ads are boring. They make the
military sound like just another big business. It doesn't help that
you show all of those so-called soldiers wearing clunky headphones
and big nerdy life preservers. These commercials appeal to the kind
of person who would otherwise be applying to a technical college for
TV and VCR repair. Is that really the kind of image you want to
project to foreign powers?

This isn't the 1950s. Most
ordinary people know that the military is an awful place to work.
Only the most highly motivated individuals will apply to work for an
organization with a history of abusing the most basic human rights of
its employees, so stop trying to convince Johnny Snowshovel to sign
up. Instead, make a strong appeal to the military's traditional base
of support: schoolyard bullies, the criminally insane, out-of-season
deer hunters, civil war re-enactors, and John Wayne wanna-be gun
enthusiasts. Go ahead and put the militia back in your military by
telling the truth about the real fun of military life. Perhaps you
could revamp your motto of the 1980s into something like "Kill All
That You Can Kill, in the Army!"

Lower
Enlistment Standards

I think it's a great idea
that you fellas have about eliminating the requirement that recruits
have a high school diploma. After all, you don't need to know nothin'
about no grammar to pull no stinkin' trigger, right? The problem is
that you don't take this idea far enough.

If you aren't going to
require a high school diploma, why make all those kids wait until
they're eighteen years old to sign up? After all, they're just going
to spend that time sitting through all those boring classes that they
won't need anyway. Don't wait until they come of age, enroll those
kids now so that they can start earning money! Once the education
requirements are taken away, the only thing that would keep someone
from being a good soldier is an inability to hold up a heavy rifle.
So, from now on, the military should accept anyone standing over 5
feet tall and weighing over 100 pounds.

If you think about it,
you'll see that the inclusion of children in the armed forces should
improve military discipline as well. These kids wouldn't be able to
smoke, drink, or go out to strip clubs at the end of their shifts,
and if they don't follow orders, they can be sent to their barracks
without supper.

Reform
Public Education

For those short-sighted
students who choose to stay in school and drain resources from our
government's educational welfare system for as long as they can,
offer a reformed curriculum with courses that will prepare them for a
successful military career. These courses would include the
following: Kicking Butt 101, Intro. to Following Orders Blindly,
Environmental History -- Agent Orange and the Restoration of the
Southeast Asian Savanna, and Home-Front Economics -- Military
Spending and the New Mathematics.

Follow this advice, and soon
you'll have more recruits than you ever dreamed of. In time, if the
plan is implemented correctly, the entire nation will be marching to
the beat of the military drum. Oh well, we can dream, can't
we?